Edinburgh’s built heritage is at risk from reckless developers - Bruce Whitehead
Reckless developers are destroying Edinburgh. There, I've said it. Across the eclectic and stunning built environment of this city, old landmarks are steadily being replaced by plain, unambitious, functional but ugly piles of fake, dressed sandstone, glass and zinc.
Most new designs seem cheap and nasty with accountants in the driving seat, maximising profit for faceless offshore tax-averse hedge funds, gambling on asset speculation, with little connection to place or people.
Take our report yesterday on the bulldozer-ready plan from Henderson Herd and Mayfly Capital to flatten Argyll House. The clue is in the name. In a capitalist system only money really matters and homes, jobs and quality of life are of minimal priority; these firms force heartless and gloomy monstrosities on our battered but cherished landmarks and by-ways.
An artist's impression of Lady Lawson Street reveals that after half a century of open space in front of Argyll House, we are to get yet another stark, shadowy trench with fine local-stone Victorian tenements and shops on one side, confronted by the smooth fakery of a Carolinian edifice in pre-formed blockchain artificial sandstone.
A well planned urban district allows for gaps - pends - through which glimpses and views are available to pedestrians, cyclists, visitors and occupants. We don't choose homes with sheer walls and corridors; we have open plan, split level, mezzanine, hallways, balconies.
So why does Edinburgh Council's planning department seem determined to spoil our priceless unique gem of a city by approving so many plain, cheap and joyless structures that glower down on us and ruin the freshness and variety of the Capital?
Granted, there is a plan to restore a walking route through the site, but why is it all so stark, grey and similar to the existing building, if that one is so unfit for purpose?
It's particularly galling that they can't find a way to utilise the iconic former Scottish Widows beehive building, with its glorious Salisbury Crags backdrop.
And Argyll House already provides, in the words of the multi-award winning architect Malcolm Fraser, a "sturdy... modernist" workspace for 900 tech staff. Mr Fraser represents a group of heritage, climate change and tech experts deeply concerned about Edinburgh's current obsession with knocking down buildings into landfill, to build hotels.
"Council can block this by triggering a heritage listing which would protect these vital jobs, rather than the wealth of a US real estate firm" he says.
These days councillors are appointed to committees in vape-filled rather than smoke filled rooms, with horse trading to keep shaky coalitions in power. Most have no special knowledge of their department.
Public servants on the other hand are specifically employed for these skillsets. Somewhere in the mix of professional expertise and democratic process, space needs to be made for input from lay members of the community - "the people who do all the living' and dyin' in this place" - to quote James Stewart's character in It's a Wonderful Life.
Otherwise we'll end up with another glass-and-steel "Metropolis" out of a Fritz Lang silent movie.